Intro
I started out as a 3D artist, and I expanded my studies in January by interning with one of the companies that makes the Three Kings multi-user VR experience. Three Kings follows the story of the three candidates to the Throne of Denmark, Svend, Knud and Valdemar. It’s a multiverse performance made on the White Hole Theatre platform, presented in collaboration with Viborg Municipality and Late Love Production.
To know more about the project itself, click here.
The company I worked for as a 3D artist for Three Kings, is Midtjysk 3D Service, owned by Lars Hemmingsen. I still work in testing the hardware and work on the on-boarding for Late Love Production until June 16th 2023. Lars was my boss when working for Three Kings. The studio is currently based in a building in the center of Viborg, that is referred to as Plastic Collective. Plastic Collective is not a building by itself, but it identifies a group of coders, animators, producers, writers, designers and directors. They work together and have diverse projects in film, art, VR, games and software.
Tasks
I modeled characters and I made sets of props for a minigame part of the experience, which started with a research on how the objects looked in medieval times. I also did photogrammetry of buildings and I retopologized them in Houdini, which was my last task on the internship.
For the retopology of the character’s faces, I had to take in account the following specifications:
- follow the retopology style that was previously done in finished characters
- retopologize certain places so the face deforms well on the ones that will be animated
- disperse topology just so where the mesh is more dense, there will be more particles, and understand how to create loops when the topology is triangulated.
In the process of solving the matter, I developed a more solution-based thinking that allowed me to just pick something and test, rather than getting lost in too many decisions and feel crippled to the challenge. I found that the way I dealt with it broke some psychological demotivating walls.
These are examples of work of the characters I did:
A task that scaled up my motivation
When retopologizing the set of props based on particle dispersion, I found that I had to move back and forth between Maya and Unity to test the topology with the particle system. It was taking too much time doing this manually, and I had to find a way to optimize the process, given that I had to retopologize more sets of props.
The issue: I already had the base meshes with a low topology, as in this photo:
But what we needed was a topology pattern that will work with the particle system created for the assets. After the assets are done and textured, they have to be retopologized, since where the vertices are denser, the particles are also denser. My meshes were modeled in polygons, which is the general workflow in modeling. Because of that, the polygons transformed in triangles in Unity were too uniform and they created clear cuts with the Particle System applied. The polygons create uniform triangles, meanwhile the retopology based directly on triangles has a more diagonal, dispersed look:
The idea was to create a structure with no clear patterns, as those patterns would show in the particle system; therefore a more chaotic or messy structure gave a more natural look.
The solution: Upon seeing the issue, we came to an agreement that it is possible to make the process faster in Houdini, for this or further issues of the retopology matter. Upon that conclusion, me and Lars had a meeting and he gave me the opportunity to find a way to retopologize in Houdini, given I mentioned to him I would like to learn a bit of it. We estimated 2 weeks for me to learn some Houdini basics and some pieces of VEX, to make a retopology tool. He also had a plan B in case it wouldn’t work or it would go past two weeks.
The outcome: Fortunately that wasn’t necessary. I made a node-based retopology that would make the points spread more on the positive x axis, and less on the negative. It worked well, and it was further improved by my boss and Bastian (one of the board members of Plastic Collective), by making it spread from a point in the space to the object and creating a bounding box. We had a lot of fun making it together, and I am really glad Lars gave me the opportunity and trust that I would figure it out. I saw that he cared about my scope in the internship, and he gave me the tools and time to improve what I wanted in my skills, including confidence in my mindset. It also gave me the opportunity to see a professional work on my Houdini file, which improved my understanding on how big the possibilities are. This had a very positive impact towards my mentality, because someone finally trusted my instincts and had a positive result from it, one that would cut down days of work, possibly weeks on the long run taking in account the possible errors in playing in a destructive way with topology. When you’re given a change to give your all and you are appreciated for it, it’s the best gift life can give, in my opinion.
Need a bit of fun in all the reading?
I took part of a test with a Mocap suit from Qualisys, and got acquainted to their product and how it works. It was really interesting and gave me the opportunity to ask questions on what this product is capable of and what else they use it for. Besides that, from the chat I had with Martin (the Business development manager of Qualisys), he gave me an introduction on his path towards his career. It was a short introduction to his journey, but it gave me an idea on what one needs to know in order to get into that field.
This is a sound and video mockup of me multiplied by 4 doing the calibration warmup- that our awesome Art Director, Martina Scarpelli put together, and I thought it deserves a highlight:
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to have had Lana Tankosa Nikolic (the producer and owner of Late Love Production) introduce me to this project and give me a chance to participate in it. I am grateful to have met, collaborated and had fun with all the Plastic Collective members. Especially, working for Lars Hemmingsen and Lana was a great experience.